ELF – Engelsk läsförståelse (HPVAR2015P5)

In the following text there are gaps which indicate that something has been left out. Look at the four alternatives that correspond to each gap and decide which one best fits the gap. Then mark your choice on your answer sheet.

Happiness or Money?

In 2006 Richard Layard, an economist at the London School of Economics, argued that unhappiness was a bigger social problem in Britain than unemployment. Lord Layard pointed out that more people were 1_____ incapacity benefits because of depression and other mental disorders than were on the dole.

The subsequent recession fixed that. The jobless now outnumber the joyless – there is nothing like a drop in gross domestic product (GDP) to remind everyone how much this much-maligned metric matters. But 2_____ the economic gloom, economists and policymakers have not lost their interest in happiness. But is happiness, in fact, the right goal for government?

Happiness, of course, makes an appearance in America’s founding documents. But the Declaration of Independence does not say that government should pursue the happiness of its citizens, only that it should 3_____ its citizens’ unalienable right to pursue it for themselves.

If people do not know what will make them happy, governments might helpfully tell them what might. If people know what is best for them, but lack the self-discipline to choose it, some governments might also be tempted to nudge them in the right direction.

But sometimes people have the knowledge and the self-command to choose happiness, and they 4_____ fail to do so. Thus, in a recent study, about 70% of people said they would be happier earning less money and sleeping more. These and similar findings support the notion that money isn’t everything. But ask people what they would actually choose, as opposed to what would make them happy, and their answers can sometimes surprise: 17% of those who say they would be happier sleeping for longer and earning less also say they would still choose the 5_____ job.

Money may not buy happiness. But why take the chance?

The Economist

The Young Ones

From a review of Medieval Children by Nicholas Orme

Sex, we are told, began in the 1960s. Childhood, on the other hand, began in the seventeenth century – or so the social historians of the 1960s and 1970s would have us believe. According to them, ‘in medieval society the idea of childhood did not exist’; children were simply regarded as ‘small and inadequate adults’, who dressed, worked and lived like their elders. As many of them died young and most were sent away from home at a very early age to serve in other households, parents could not afford to get too close to their offspring and treated them with a detachment and lack of sympathy that would be considered reprehensible today. The logical conclusion to be drawn from this is that the concept of childhood as something distinct and different from adulthood is a modern invention.

In his informative and entertaining study, Nicholas Orme challenges this assumption and convincingly argues that it is not merely flawed but untenable. Unlike his predecessors in the field, who principally relied on iconographical material, Orme has cast his net wide and drawn on a remarkable variety of medieval sources. His meticulous research allows an immensely detailed examination of every aspect of childhood, beginning in the womb and ending with the progression to adulthood. The result is a book that is nominally about children but actually covers every aspect of medieval life, from the impact of Church and State decrees down to the minutiae of the highly complex medieval alphabet.

As Orme demonstrates, childhood was recognised as a distinct state in both religious and secular law from about 1200. Before puberty, children were exempted from making confession, receiving Communion, paying tithes and church dues and were deemed unable to get married fully and permanently. Child weddings were frowned upon and the Church refused to consider such marriages as binding until the couple reached puberty and could give their own informed consent. Two children from Cheshire who were married in 1552 aged two and three (the groom being so young he had to be carried in his uncle’s arms and have his vows said on his behalf) refused to ratify their marriage when they came of age and it therefore had to be annulled.

In fact, such instances of very young children being treated as if they were adults were rare and usually confined to the rich, who had properties and dynasties to protect. As Orme ably points out, even in the medieval period children did not emerge from their parents’ shadow until their twenties; apprentices came out of service at that age, clerks could only be made priests at twentyfour and those of noble birth could not inherit until twentyone. Because they lacked financial independence, it was impractical for them to marry before they attained majority, and most did not.

Children were provided with toys: archaeological examples of spinning tops survive from the eleventh century, and mass-produced knights on horseback (made from an alloy of lead and tin) from the reign of Edward I. They had their own songs, games and riddles, depicted in manuscript illuminations and preserved in school notebooks. Then, as now, their youthful exuberance irritated their elders. The dean and chapter of Exeter Cathedral complained bitterly in 1448 about the ‘young persons’ who used their cloister for playing with ‘the top, queck, penny prick, and most at tennis, by which the walls of the said cloister have been defouled and the glass windows all burst asunder’.

It is this wealth of detail and lively anecdote that makes Medieval Children so rewarding and stimulating. In less sure hands, it might have been overwhelming, but Orme’s prose is clear and concise and he never loses sight of the themes that underpin his book. Special credit should also be given to his publishers, Yale University Press, who have complemented his text with an equally rich collection of illustrations. This book is a treasure trove, full of gems, even for the non-medievalist.

Juliet Barker, Literary Review